The House Always Wins fits in the annoyingly popular genre of non-fiction mixed with true stories, in this case the author’s quest to remodel and decorate her brand-new house in Colorado. Along the way, she gives advice on how we, too, can create the perfect home, which apparently requires loads of cash, the intervention of legions of specialists I did not suspect existed (floral designers? for “regular” people like us?), and passe and supremely annoying little tricks to make her husband sign checks for floral designers, wrappers of stair railings with evergreen (I’m NOT kidding!), and expensive wallpaper for the powder room.

Like Planet Google reviewed here a short while ago, Googled tells the story of the company, focusing on its impact on the media industry. The portraits of the founders and the company as uber-geeks, brilliant but arrogant and often blind to other people’s feelings, are well-drawn, if overly fawning. The author also describes the unusual and ambiguous role of the CEO, Eric Schmidt, in enlightened and careful detail. I found the last third of the book, where he evokes the media industry’s reaction, fascination, and opposition to Google, tedious and not as constructed as it could be. Is Google a classic threat to an industry that serves as intermediary between content producers and consumers, or is it breaking the entire system of content production, for instance copyrights? I wish the argument would be better framed.

A delightful story of a family in the candy-making business with slightly shady beginnings, a complicated marital history, and a remarkable daughter-in-law with excellent marketing instincts (except when she’s dead wrong!), a shameful past, and a not-so-clear future. True Confections manages to read like a novel despite the many well-research candy-business details,and keeps twisting and turning until the very end. Excellent!

Stones into Schools continues the story started in Three Cups of Tea, the poignant description of how a mountain climber promised his hosts in Pakistan to build a school, and succeeded, years later and despite all odds. Now at the head of a bona fide charitable foundation (unfelicitously abbreviated ‘CAI’) Mortenson continues to bring literacy to villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan that are plagued by poverty, difficult access, and fearfully harsh weather.

This book and the CAI effort in general is a wonderful illustration of the benefits of intelligently targeted aid, as opposed to blind aid to corrupt or inept governments (as described in Dead Aid). It’s also proof that one person can make a difference, albeit at fantastic cost to physical health and his family. And finally it shows that barriers take time to remove, as is painfully illustrated by very smart young women who are denied a (free) education because their fathers or husbands just can’t see beyond the boundaries of tradition…

In The Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson makes an impassioned plea for conservation. That was the boring part, for me at least. Before he gets to the plea, however, he gives many examples of biological diversity, from the usual Amazonian jungles to … the hills of Northern California and their rare butterfly species. He also gives limpid explanations of the mechanisms of evolution and includes many useful illustrations, my favorite being one where each species group is represented at scale with the number of species in it (huge insects, big mushrooms, tiny mammals). A perfect book until two third of the way through.

Do you think grammar and usage are utterly boring? In The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, Jack Lynch will change your view of grammarians and usage mavens while taking you through an entertaining history of prescriptive (“thou must”) and descriptive (“whatever feels good”) linguists in all their extremist silliness.

The ravages of Latin grammar, the quick passing of slang, the constant renewing of longing for the good old days of proper grammar are all fodder for his humor. Great fun.